WAPPINGERS FALLS, N.Y. — Habitat for Humanity of Dutchess County welcomed a new chief executive officer in April.
Eelco Kessels joined the nonprofit as CEO in April following an eight year tenure as the Executive Director of the Global Center on Cooperative Security, an organization that combats violence worldwide through research, social programs, community outreach and philanthropy.
“I’ve been in the nonprofit world my whole professional career,” Kessels said, starting in his home country, the Netherlands.
Kessels worked for the Global Center for 10 years in total, leading the organization as Executive Director for eight years and seeing it through steady growth, according to revenue statements dating back to 2015 published by Pro Publica.
For the last five years, Kessels had been working remotely for the Global Center out of his home in Beacon — a house he bought with his wife and the couple’s first home they’ve ever owned.
“That home buying process was very complex,” Kessels said, galvanizing his awareness of the severity of the housing crisis in Dutchess County and the nation more broadly. “Since the pandemic, I mean, housing prices have just gone upside down, so it’s very clear to me that this was an issue and something that I’ve seen.” Figures published by the New York State Department of Taxation and Finance show median home prices in Dutchess County have risen 15% from $398,000 to $460,000 between 2022 and 2024.
When Kessels went looking for his next opportunity, and decided to hunt for something that could create impact closer to his home, the opening at Habitat Dutchess was a perfect fit.
“Housing affordability is everybody’s issue, directly or indirectly — in this county in particular,” Kessels said. “So when this opportunity came by, it just ticked all of the boxes.”
Four months in, Kessels said, it still feels like a good fit, even though getting acquainted with the job has required a lot of travel. “I felt like I only started to actually be here like three or four weeks in,” Kessels said.
Kessels admitted he doesn’t have much experience in housing or construction, “except for tinkering around my own house,” he said, but he brings over a decade of nonprofit management experience to the chief executive role at a time when Habitat Dutchess is going through a transition.
“I saw here with Habitat Dutchess that they were just at the brink of becoming more of a developer and being able to serve more of the community,” he said. “That’s kind of the same moment at which I took over as executive director of my previous nonprofit. Ensuring that the funding relationships grow in the same way, the board diversifies and grows in the same way, the team here has all of the support that they need — I saw that as a comparable experience that I could bring into the organization.”
Kessels and Habitat Dutchess Chief Development Officer Jessica Miuccio said the next steps under Kessels’ new leadership are measured expansion.
“What makes us so lucky in having Eelco join us is that he’s approaching that expansion from a very holistic and strategic point of view,” Miuccio said. Kessels and Miuccio emphasized a commitment to working with and for communities as the organization expands and seeks to complete more projects and provide services to the rural reaches of the county.
“If and when we’re engaging with a new municipality, part of that process is going to be community outreach and community surveying,” Kessels said. “Because at the end of the day it’s also a partially volunteer-based project, and we really want the community to be part of that — including the future homeowners, because they’re going to be part and parcel of the same.”
Last year, Habitat for Humanity completed their first home in the northeast Dutchess County region. The house, on Rudd Pond Road in the town of North East, marked a major step in a years-long process to engage the region that started with offering no-cost repairs to houses and mobile homes in the town, Kessels said.
Habitat Dutchess provides no-cost home repairs, now including repairs to mobile homes; an education program for adults and adolescents called Home Buyers’ University that leads people through the process of preparing to purchase a home; and Habitat ReStore, a retail store that sells donated home goods and furniture at reduced prices.
More information on Habitat Dutchess’s services, volunteering or donating is available online at www.habitatdutchess.org.
Photo by Graham Corrigan
